


midnight stroll, moonlit soak

by Engineer104



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Also a little bit, Angst, Annette suffers and Felix feels bad man, F/M, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Hurt/Comfort, Mutual Pining, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Pre-Relationship, beta read by me so we die more like hubert i guess, little bit anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-25 05:35:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21970765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Engineer104/pseuds/Engineer104
Summary: Felix finds Annette throwing rocks in the fishing pond. Somehow, inexplicably, he doesn't keep walking.
Relationships: Annette Fantine Dominic/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 21
Kudos: 122





	midnight stroll, moonlit soak

**Author's Note:**

> look i know what you're thinking and that's "another fic? really?" to which i say (1) i just finished a WIP i've had for a while and (2) i'm on break which is the perfect time to Be Creative
> 
> ~~also are you really upset there's one more felannie fic in the world. please~~
> 
> should note this takes place between their A and A+ supports. also early Azure Moon timeline might be a little wonky but it's just a few days or so after the Reunion at Dawn ~~aka the best chapter in every route in the game~~ battle
> 
> anyway without further ado, enjoy!!

Felix understands the importance of rest - despite what Sylvain and Ingrid may think - but the reality of it isn’t as attainable as he’d like. A few days he’s already spent in his old room at the Monastery, a few days since they dispelled the bandits from Garreg Mach, a few days after reuniting with his old classmates…

A few days since the boar made it clear he could no longer hide his true face.

The memory of his twisted sneer and how he’d barely acknowledged them haunted him, made it impossible to quiet his mind long enough to sink into a restless sleep. What had he returned to? Ingrid convinced him to chase a rumor, but the prince they found was worse than a shell of a man.

He was as good as a corpse, as if he stood after his execution and walked away to avenge his own death against his betrayers.

Or so Felix tells himself. What good is this last shred of loyalty that lured him here?

He gives up on sleep after an hour lying awake and thinking, always thinking too loudly. He throws his blankets off and grabs his sheathed sword from where it leans against the desk, and after throwing on a cloak to ward against any nighttime breeze he walks out the door.

The floorboards creak under his feet, but once he’s past Sylvain’s room there’s little reason to keep quiet. He treads the familiar path down the stairs and out of the dormitory - how strange it is, sleeping in an actual bed within walls after weeks on the move, how strange it should be the Officers’ Academy - where a wind tugs at his hair and reminds him he forgot to tie it up.

He sighs but decides against returning just for that, especially if it means risking waking Sylvain - assuming he’s even in his own room - who’s a light sleeper. He doesn’t particularly want to speak with anyone; all Felix wants now is to expel some of his energy against a training dummy and hope that somehow it’ll raise a sword or lance and fight back.

The route between the dormitory and the training grounds is one he’s traveled more times than he can count. It carries him past the greenhouse with its shattered windows and empty flowerbeds and—

A loud splash bursts from the fishing pond.

Felix’s hand tightens around the hilt of his sword. With his breath trapped in his lungs, he creeps a little further past the greenhouse than usual, towards the pond; he never did try his hand at fishing, despite Ingrid insisting it might be fun (since when did _Ingrid_ care about fun?) and Sylvain commenting it might be a way to relax, so he rarely had a reason to visit. But he knows the path well enough since the dining hall overlooks it, and even in the dark his feet remember.

The full moon swims across the pond’s surface, its reflection rippling and distorted as something splashes from within. At first Felix wonders if it’s just a fish - he hadn’t realized any had survived with no one at the Monastery to feed them - catching an insect skimming along the surface, but then a movement at the end of the dock catches his eye.

A figure standing there lobs a rock into the pond.

Felix’s eyes narrow, but he loosens his grip on his sword. If it’s an intruder that means ill, it would hardly be wise to make so much noise.

“I _hate_ him!” the figure shrieks.

Wait…he recognizes that voice, that yell, without the lyrical quality he once couldn’t (still can’t) get out of his head.

“Or…no, I don’t mean that.” The figure deflates and stares at something sitting in their hand. “Maybe it would be easier if I did, but—ugh!” They throw another rock.

Felix steps onto the dock - was it always this unsteady? - and approaches her. “Aren’t you worried you’ll wake all the fish with your yelling?”

Annette jumps with a yelp, spinning around with her arms flung out in a move he recognizes as the beginning of a spell. He raises his own arms, bracing himself against a vicious wind, but a heartbeat later Annette gasps and flails.

His hand shoots out and grabs her wrist before she can fall backwards into the pond.

They teeter in a strange, frozen limbo of wide-eyed stares and racing hearts before Felix exhales and tugs her away from the end. “Why is it every time I find you somewhere you’re close to falling?” he wonders.

“Why is it every time you see me you have to startle me so I _do_ fall?” Annette retorts. She wrenches her wrist from his grip and crosses her arms.

Is it the cold - still nothing like what Faerghus has to offer - that darkens her cheeks in a way Felix can’t help but find endearing?

“I, uh, I don’t,” he protests.

“Yes, you do!” she says, pouting. “Just a few days ago you found me in the library, and—”

“It’s not my fault you were dancing at the top of a _ladder_ ,” Felix reminds her, “and I told you to be careful.”

“Well, thank you very much, Felix, for worrying about my well-being,” Annette says more scathingly than he (thinks he) deserves. It twists a knot into his stomach, how easily she mistrusts his intentions.

But then she sighs, her shoulders sagging with defeat, and she mumbles, “No, really…thank you.” Her gaze flits to the pond. “That’s, well, that’s more concern than someone else I can name has shown me.”

Felix stands just behind her and lifts his hand to—

He drops his hand and grips the hilt of his sword; the sight of her so slumped when mere moments ago some righteous fury - something far different than anything she ever directed at him - possessed her made his chest ache. His hand itches, calling for an enemy to challenge, to fight, but—

Oh, right. He was on his way to the training ground when he found her.

He turns to go - he hadn’t wanted to speak to anyone; why did he so easily let her draw him into her little world? - but her voice, soft and hesitant, halts him in his tracks.

“Were you, um, did you have trouble sleeping tonight too?”

Felix faces her again, though a very large part of him wants to flee, to insist he has another destination, that he doesn’t care to be drawn into a conversation (least of all one that requires him to be sensitive)…but he can hear the hint of a plea in Annette’s words and see it in her downcast blue eyes when he dares to meet them and knows that she does not want to be alone.

And, for once, he’s not sure he wants to be either.

A sigh escapes him, but he pads past Annette and sits at the end of the dock, his feet dangling over the pond’s surface. A fish’s fin disturbs the water, sending ripples out, and he says, “Your yelling did wake them.” When he hears her groan behind him, he allows himself a slight smirk, cheered by her reaction. It prompts him to add, “Maybe they would sleep again if you sang.”

“You think so?” Annette gracelessly plops down beside him, sitting cross-legged so her knee bumps his thigh. “Are you here to ask me to sing _you_ to sleep, Felix?”

Her innocent, if indignant, question brings a burning heat to his face, and he turns away from her just enough he hopes she doesn’t see. “No, but…” Is that an option? _Can_ he intentionally convince her to sing for him? Would that even quiet the tempest of his thoughts long enough to succumb to sleep?

(He used to hum her lyrics to himself on the worst nights since war broke out, wondering where their imaginer was, what she did, if she was even alive, but she doesn’t need to know that.)

“Well, good!” she says in a voice pitched half an octave higher than usual. She leans forward, her elbows resting on her legs and chin in her hands, before shooting him a sideways glance. “I’ve never seen you with your hair down.”

Felix raises an eyebrow at her. “And…? I’d never seen you with yours down until a few days ago either.” His eyes drift to her hair streaming past her shoulders, notices how the moonlight picks out the lighter strands interspersing with the vivid orange.

“Just, a, ah, something I noticed,” she says as her cheeks turn a pretty pink. She plays with her hair, pulling it over one shoulder and twisting a few thick strands around her finger.

For once the idea of holding something other than the hilt of a sword seizes him. He longs to take her hand, to still them of a motion he’s sure is similar to the restlessness that drove him from his bedroom.

Felix tears his eyes away to watch the moon drift lower. “It’s not…me you hate, is it?” he wonders when the silence - eerie from someone as exuberant as Annette - is too much for him to bear.

“What?” Annette jumps as if he startled her from a daydream (which he probably did) and snaps her head around to face him. “I—oh, no, it’s not you.” Then, as an afterthought, she mumbles, “This time.”

He can’t help the smile tugging at his lips; how does she manage to tease them out of him so easily? But the memory of her anger sobers him, and he dares to ask, “Then who—”

“Why are you wearing your sword?” Annette cuts him off. She pulls her legs up and hugs them to her chest, once more staring out at the pond.

“I was on my way to the training grounds when I found you,” he explains, not quite put-out by her change in conversation. He shrugged and added, “And it’s just good sense to carry a weapon considering the monastery was a bandit den until a few days ago.”

“Oh, right.” The ghost of a sheepish smile flits across her lips. “And, well, it is you too, I suppose.”

He frowns, wondering if he’s imagining judgment in her voice. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

She laughs and nudges his shoulder with hers. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you without a weapon either,” she admits. “Even during the ball five years ago, you had it on your hip.” Her mirth expands something in his chest, the sound of it musical and wrapping around him like one of her songs. “Mercie and I even roped Ingrid into a bet beforehand.”

“A…bet?” He quirks an eyebrow at her.

“We bet her you would keep it off for the ball.” She giggles, blue eyes bright as they fall on him. “Ingrid said you wouldn’t, and she won.” Her laughter fades, but her smile lingers. “Mercie and I had to help her clean out her Pegasus’ stall for a month after that.”

He groans and covers his face, but despite her teasing her amusement infects him. “Am I really that predictable?”

“Oh, well, sometimes,” Annette admits, “but…I can’t tell what you’re thinking most of the time.” She pokes him in the cheek but mumbles an apology when he bats her hand away. “It’s almost like…”

When she trails off, his heart jumps expectantly, and he leans towards her, hanging on her every word. “Like what?”

Annette narrows the gap between them, so close her breath whispering over his jaw makes him shiver. “Like…you’re a rune I don’t know how to apply into a spell yet.”

Felix’s mouth dries when he meets her eyes. They hold him captive, all those individual shades of blue he can’t name, and with her voice echoing through his head and heart racing with all the exhilaration of a battle hard-fought her allure only grows. When her gaze drifts down, his breath catches, and—

She jerks away from him with a gasp, blinking at him as if in a daze. He stares at her, heart already heavy with an awful disappointment, as she jumps to her feet. “Maybe I should go to bed!” she says much too loudly. She stretches her arms over her head and covers her mouth. “Oh, Saints, I’m exhausted, and I have so much studying to do in the—”

She takes a step backwards.

Her foot falls through air.

Felix’s arm snaps out before he can think, before his heart can so much as jump into his throat, but his fingers close around nothing.

Annette shrieks on her way down, plunging into the pond with a splash far louder than the one that drew him here. Water splatters on the dock, a few cold drops hitting his skin, but he barely notices. His heart pounds as he kneels as close to the end of the dock as he dares, peering into the white-tipped depths, desperately searching for—

Her head bobs out, and a beat later she stands, spluttering and coughing. She crosses her arms, her whole body wracked with violent shivers. The pond’s surface submerges her only up to her collarbone, but with the slight nip to the air, drowning is not the only danger.

Felix grabs her arms and tugs her out, ignoring the cold water drops she rains on him, until she sprawls on the dock in a soaking wet heap with her dress clinging to her in a way that does _not_ ignite a heat in his blood. Her shivering fails to abate, and she curls in on herself, teeth chattering and face too pale where moments ago she flushed. “F-F-F—”

He flings his cloak around her, and she clutches the edge, holding it in a white-knuckled grip. “Th-th-thank—”

“You’ll bite your tongue if you try to talk,” he chides her. His fear fades quickly, leaving a simmering anger in its place. “What the hell, Annette?”

She makes a weird garbled sound that might be halfway between a moan and a groan, but she looks so uncomfortable, so unhappy and miserable and _embarrassed_ , that his anger cools.

He sighs and stands, gracelessly hauling her to his feet after him. “Let’s go see if Professor Manuela’s in the infirmary,” he mumbles.

“N-n-no, I’m f-f-f—”

“You just fell into a pond in the middle of Ethereal Moon,” Felix says, leveling a sharp glance at her. He nudges her back towards _solid_ land, her pace so slow and faltering he debates picking her up and carrying her to the infirmary.

“I-I-I g-grew up in F-F-Faerg-ghus,” Annette protests feebly, “s-s-same as—”

“Did you make a habit of swimming in winter?” he retorts. When she shakes her head - though not without a mutinous grumble - he continues, “Then march.”

“F-f-for s-s-someone who h-hates c-c-commanding troops,” she stutters, “y-y-you sure are b-b-bossy.”

Despite his worry, this latest insult pulls a slight smile from him, but before he can retort - or, more accurately, build up the courage to simply carry her - a silhouette appears on the staircase leading to the first-floor dormitories. A candle flame flickers, the figure’s face outlined in shadow before they descend the stairs and—

Annette inhales sharply. “F-F-Father?”

With his hands still lingering on her arms, Felix senses the instant she tenses underneath her shivers, the subtle way in which her demeanor shifts. His back instantly stiffens, and one of his hands falls to his sword.

But it’s only Sir Gustave standing halfway up the stairs before them, the candle’s flame casting his face in heavy shadows.

A wave of loathing, so intense he has to restrain himself from drawing steel, nearly overtakes him. His is a familiar face both from childhood and from the last five years, but before returning to the monastery Felix always went out of his way to avoid him since the one time he didn’t proved disastrous.

( _”Go home.”_

_“I cannot when my own brother sided with the Empire.”_

_“Then what was your excuse before the war? Coward…”_ )

“Annette?” Sir Gustave says. “What are you doing out so late? And with Lord—”

“She fell in the pond,” Felix interrupts, not eager to prolong this encounter while Annette still suffered. “I’m taking her to the infirmary.”

“I…yes, go,” he says easily, and he stands aside. “I shall not keep you, though I suspect Professor Manuela may not be in a state to assist you.”

Felix glowers at him over Annette’s head and can’t keep the snideness from his voice when he says, “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Her step slows even more as they take the stairs, and with a hiss of frustration Felix scoops her into his arms. She falls against his chest, trembling, though she nuzzles closer to him mumbling, “Y-y-you’re s-so war-warm, F-F-Felix…”

His face burns, but with her settled in his arms he hastens his pace, eager to be away from Sir Gustave and somewhere Annette can warm up. But if Professor Manuela is in one of her drunken stupors…

It’s a stroke of luck the professor answers her door on the first knock. Her eyes widen with surprise, and she says, “Felix, what—” Her gaze drifts down to Annette, and a wry sort of smile pokes at her normally impassive lips.

“What’s so funny?” he demands.

“Nothing,” she says quickly. “I just never thought you were one for…fishing.” She beckons them inside.

Annette’s silence worries Felix more than he can explain. It seizes his chest and makes it difficult to breathe. He tells himself it was little more than a dunk, especially when she sits up on the professor’s guest chair without assistance and accepts a steaming mug of tea, but her soaking isn’t the only thing niggling on his mind.

“Would you like some tea, Felix?” the professor offers.

He shakes his head. He shifts his feet in place where he still stands beside the professor’s open door, uncertain what he should do, if he should linger or leave or—

Trek to his original destination and tear a few training dummies to shreds.

“You don’t have to stay,” the professor comments, her mild voice bursting the bubble of his private thoughts. She glances from Annette towards him, gaze falling to his sword. “Did you have somewhere else you needed to be so late?”

“I…” Midnight training be damned, he needs—

Annette’s wide blue eyes flicker to his face before falling away again. She looks so small and cowed buried in the folds of his cloak, expression bleak and unhappy, and his chest aches at the sight. He takes a step towards her before something in him falters, remembering how she hesitated to confide in him before her tumble.

She never told him who she tried so hard to hate, but from the way Sir Gustave keeps his distance, Felix can begin to guess.

(He knows a thing or two about disappointing fathers too.)

His hands tighten into fists, his breath short with frustration. He’s torn between wanting to stay…and wanting to flee, whatever this feeling that grips him whenever Annette smiles at him, whenever the memory of her song fills his head, whenever their hands brush and her eyes linger and _everything_.

Damn him, he met her again for the first time in five years just a few days ago, so how can she be doing this to him _again_?

Felix inhales, trying to shake some of the stiffness from his body, and says, “No, there’s nowhere else right now.”

Annette lifts her face, lips slightly parted; when she meets his eyes, she smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> I must admit, this fic (despite being so short) really went off the rails. was Annette supposed to fall in the pond? Nope. was Gilbert supposed to make an appearance? Aha nope! were Annette and Felix supposed to almost kiss? NOPE NOPE NOPE. did it end up working out anyway? i'd like to think so ~~even if they skipped talking about the heavy stuff oops but i mean there will be other fics for that~~ but you can also be the judge of that ;)
> 
> anyway, thank you for reading! <3


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